How to Use the Backspace Key as a Back Navigation Button in Chrome

byRoss McKilloponFebruary 13, 2018

In previous versions of Google’s Chrome web browser, the backspace key on your keyboard navigated back (when you weren’t writing text). By popular demand, that feature was removed from Chrome (yes you read that right). If you’re among the many people who quite liked that feature and want it back, you’ve come to the right place. We’ll show you how to re-enable the ability to use the backspace key as a ‘back button’ in Chrome.

When Google disabled the ability to use the backspace key on your keyboard as a ‘back button’ (ie. go back to the previous page you were viewing), they knew a lot of people would miss that feature and responded by creating an extension that lets you re-enable it.

Head over to the Google Chrome Store and install the Go Back With Backspace extension. As with all extensions, it’s super-easy to install – just click the ADD TO CHROME button.

When prompted, click the Add extension button.

When the extension has been successfully installed you’ll get a little notification informing you as such.

At this point you’re actually done – the backspace key on your keyboard will now function as a “back button” in Chrome. With that said, it won’t work on every page – by design. For example, if you’re typing in a ‘text box’ the backspace key will function as an actual backspace key – it will move your cursor back a space, which makes perfect sense. If there are sites you frequently visit where you don’t want the backspace key to work as a back button, just click the extensions icon (see screenshot below) and select Disable on this page

You can further customize when the extension should disable itself by clicking its icon again and this time selecting the ‘cog’ (settings) icon.

From here you can manually add or edit the sites where backspace won’t function as the back button. Using the asterisk wildcard (*) you can disable the extension for an entire domain, subdomain or path. For example, if you don’t want the extension to work for all of Gmail, you would enter https://mail.google.com/*